Eighties Cheesecake

Tom Ellard is the creative force behind Australian post-punk band Severed Heads. In 1982 he self-released two cassettes of solo material, “80s Cheesecake” and “Snappy Carrion”. These cassettes document the transitional period between the early experimental Severed Heads’ albums “Clean” and “Blubberknife” before the start of something new with “Since The Accident”. With the advent of the then new Roland TB-303 bass synthesizer, a machine synonymous with the acid house sound, Tom began to write more beat driven material. The rhythms are made by a TR-808 drum machine, Kawai S100F and SH-1 synthesizers, plus various televisions, radios, cassette decks and pedals. Two songs from these cassettes would later appear on the B-side of the “Dead Eyes Opened” single.

Fast forward 30 years, Tom was horrified to find that a copy of the “80s Cheesecake” cassette was listed for an absurd amount of money on eBay. He immediately made all of the material available on CD and eventually digitally as well. There was much discussion over how to best sequence this LP. Most of the tracks from the original two c60 cassettes have been included, as well as some previously unreleased material, finally completed after having been left abandoned back in 1982. This has only become possible with recent digital tools, but every element you hear is from thirty years ago, trimmed, re-aligned, and assembled in the fashion that was originally intended.

All songs are remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The jacket artwork incorporates the original “80s Cheesecake” cassette. Each copy includes a fold-out poster with a large photo of Tom Ellard on one side and liner notes and press clippings on the other. A long lost ancestor to the sounds of Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin and other Warp Records artists, “80’s Cheesecake” is ripe for rediscovery.